
Have you heard of the Mozart effect?
Well in 1993 a 1-page article on the subject by Frances Rauscher, Gordon Shaw and Katherine KY was published in top scientific journal Nature.
It was headlined ‘Music and Spatial Task Performance’.
Shaw (a physics professor) developed a mathematical theory of how neurons in the brain work together and noticed similarities with the mathematical structure of classical pieces.
Leading to Shaw to make the prediction that listening to the right kind of music could enhance the function of a human’s brain.
He believed Mozart had composed the right kind of music which would ‘optimally resonate with the inherent internal neural language’ and have the greatest enhancing effect.
Shaw wrote. “The magic genius of Mozart perhaps displayed a supreme use of the inherent cortical language in his music.”
With the help of Rauscher, Shaw carried out an experiment on 36 college students, testing them on a measure called ‘abstract reasoning ability’ which then transformed into IQ scores.
It showed, when listening to Mozart for 10 minutes prior to the test, it increased their average IQ from 110 to 119.
And a 9-point swing is a lot. Increasing a typical students intelligence by a massive 20%, and potentially turning B’s into A’s.
At the time the media went mad, using headlines like ‘Mozart Makes You Smarter’ & ‘Listening to Mozart is not only a music lover’s pleasure. It’s a brain tonic.’
Music companies got in on the act too. Creating and releasing new CD’s called ‘Mozart for Your Mind’ ‘Mozart Makes You Smarter’ and ‘Tune Your Brain with Mozart.’
It even affected politics. Zell Miller, governor of Georgia, announced his state budget would include $105,000 a year to provide every child born in Georgia with a tape or CD of classical music.
But sometimes all Is not what it seems…
After questions were raised by several researchers about the validity of the experiment, in 1998 psychologist Christopher Chabris conducted his own experiment, using 16 similar studies.
Finding that compared with silence Mozart on average only increased IQ’s by 1.4 points, and when compared to the students listening to relaxation music, it increased IQ’s by 3 points.
Leading to Chabris to conclude that the entire ‘Mozart Effect’ might have nothing to do with a positive effect of listening to music.
Rather than Mozart making you smarter, sitting in silence or getting completely relaxed before a challenging test, might make you dumber.
Chabris’ experiment and subsequent findings were so thorough, Nature (the top scientific journey who published the original paper) published them in 1999 and questions the validity of the original.
Then in 2007 the German government commissioned a report (again covered by Nature) to systematically review the literature on the purported intelligence effect of music, from a team of nine German neuroscientists, psychologists, educationalists and philosophers, all music experts.
German officials felt it had to tackle the subject because it had been inundated with requests for funding of studies on music and intelligence, which it didn’t know how to assess.
“We went through all of the literature to find out which questions were still open,” said lead author Ralph Schumacher, a piano-playing philosopher at the Humboldt University in Berlin.
The report pronounced Rauscher’s ‘Mozart effect’ dead.
The report was less dismissive of claims for an effect of music lessons on IQ development, particularly in young children. Most published studies are small and difficult to interpret (it found) and some suggest no long-term effect at all on IQ.
“But one or two large and careful studies have shown a small but significant effect on IQ — which can be seen over years,” said Schumacher.
“Even if the effect of musical training is confirmed in future studies, it is highly unlikely to make your child a genius. Otherwise it would be seen clearer in the current literature. The most interesting point will be to find out how the effect (if it exists) is achieved in the brain.” He concluded.
I remember aged 22 when the 1st paper was published, driving round in a bright green Rover convertible (what was I thinking), listening to Mozart.
Thinking I was a smart cookie, no doubt planning the start of our office technology business.
Only recently coming across Chabris’ subsequent paper, detailing listening to Mozart doesn’t make you smarter. It just keeps you at the ready, as opposed to silence or relaxation.
God. How dumb was I?
When something seems too good to be true it usually is.
…intuition though, needs to be used with rational analysis, especially in important matters.